et another
key, and so unlocked the door from the loggia which opened upon the
ante-room of Madonna Antonia. He held the door for the Duke, who
hesitated, seeing all in darkness.

"In," Giovanni bade him. "Tread softly. Madonna waits for you."

Recklessly, then, that unsuspecting fellow stepped into the trap.

Giovanni followed, closed the door, and locked it. The Duke, standing
with quickened pulses in that impenetrable blackness, found himself
suddenly embraced, not at all after the fond fashion he was expecting. A
wrestler's arms enlaced his body, a sinewy leg coiled itself snake-wise
about one of his own, pulling it from under him. As he crashed down
under the weight of his unseen opponent, a great voice boomed out:

"Lord of Mirandola! To me! Help! Thieves!"

Suddenly a door opened. Light flooded the gloom, and the writhing Duke
beheld a white vision of the girl whose beauty had been the lure that
had drawn him into this peril which, as yet, he scarcely understood. But
looking up into the face of the man who grappled with him, the man who
held him there supine under his weight, he began at last to understand,
or, at least, to suspect, for the face he saw, unmasked now, leering at
him with hate unspeakable through the cloud of golden hair that half
met across it, was the face of Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, whom his
family had so cruelly wronged. Giovanni Sforza's was the voice that now
fiercely announced his doom.

"You and yours have made me a thing of scorn and laughter. Yourself have
laughed at me. Go laugh in hell!"

A blade flashed up in Giovanni's hand. Gandia threw up an arm to fend
his breast, and the blade buried itself in the muscles. He screamed with
pain and terror. The other laughed with hate and triumph, and stabbed
again, this time in the shoulder.

Antonia, from the threshold, watching in bewilderment and panic, sent
a piercing scream to ring through the house, and then the voice of
Giovanni, fierce yet exultant, called aloud:

"Pico! Pico! Lord of Mirandola! Look to your daughter!"

Came steps and voice, more light, flooding now the chamber, and through
the mists gathering before his eyes the first-born of the house of
Borgia beheld hurrying men, half dressed, with weapons in their hands.
But whether they came to kill or to save, they came too late: Ten times
Giovanni's blade had stabbed the Duke, yet, hindered by the Duke's
struggles and by the effort of holding him there, he had be